Vol. 118 No. 4
I received the following note from the Taoiseach:—
"De bhíthin Seán Ó Meachair dá chur in iúl gur mian leis scor as a oifig mar Ard-Reachtaire Cuntas agus Ciste go n-éifeacht ón 3ú Samhain, 1949, tá orm a innsint duit go bhfuil an tUachtarán, ag gniomhú dhó ar chomhairle an Rialtais, tar éis géilleadh dá iarratas."
The motion in relation to that is No. 3 on to-day's Order Paper.
I move:—
That Dáil Éireann nominate William Eugene Wann, at present secretary and director of audit in the office of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, for appointment by the President to be the Comptroller and Auditor-General.
I move this motion because of the retirement, permission for which was recently granted by the President on the advice of the Government, of the former Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr. John Maher. Mr. Maher recently asked for permission to retire on purely personal and family grounds. I think that I am expressing the sentiments of every Party and every Deputy when I say that we received notification of his desire to retire with extreme regret.
Before dealing with the motion, I should like on behalf of this House to pay a tribute to the work that was done by John Maher, the former Comptroller and Auditor-General, in that high constitutional office during the period of a little over five years that he occupied that very responsible and dignified post. He was appointed to the Comptroller and Auditor-General's Office in the year 1923 and, until his appointment as Comptroller and Auditor-General in 1944, he was the secretary and director of audit in that office. During the intervening years from 1923 until he was appointed to the constitutional office of Comptroller and Auditor-General, he had very wide experience of the duties pertaining to the office of the Comptroller and Auditor-General. Those Deputies who assisted at the Committee of Public Accounts will have realised from their attendance there and from the assistance that he gave to them the depth of knowledge and the wide experience that Mr. Maher had in connection with the duties of the office of Comptroller and Auditor-General. He has retired at the comparatively early age of 63, although, under the statute, he could have remained on until he reached the age of 70. I think it is proper that we should pay a tribute to the work that he has done in that office and in the constitutional position of Comptroller and Auditor-General for very many years.
His retirement involves this House in the duty of appointing a successor. The position of Comptroller and Auditor-General is one that is enshrined in the Constitution. The holder of the office is a servant of this House. He is appointed by the Deputies in this House, and I feel sure that every Deputy will bring a sense of responsibility to bear in the choice of the person who is to fulfil the duties of this constitutional office. The Comptroller and Auditor-General is charged with the function and the high duty of being, so to speak, the watchdog of this House in order to see that the moneys which are voted or given by statute for public purposes are properly spent in accordance with the wishes of the Dáil. He is charged with the duty of seeing that the wishes of this House are carried out in every detail by the officials of the various Departments whose duty it is to pay out public moneys.
The office is one which requires personal and very watchful care and attention. It requires experience of a very specialised kind. It requires experience of governmental accountancy and the intricacies of public finance. The function of seeing that the disbursements from the Exchequer are made in strict accordance with the statute law of the country is one that requires to be discharged with great care. The Comptroller and Auditor-General has to see that the various accounting officers of the different Departments, in the disbursement of public moneys, carry out the exact wishes of this House. The manner in which that work has to be done by the Comptroller and Auditor-General is directed and guided by numerous precedents of a very intricate character which have grown up over the years since this office was established. It is here in this country, of course, an office of a constitutional character, but it had its origin in the constitutional position of the Comptroller and Auditor-General in the Parliament across the sea, Great Britain. The holder of the office must therefore realise that he is not a civil servant in the ordinary sense, that he is the servant of the public representatives elected here to this Assembly, and that he must bring to his task that experience and knowledge of precedents and law which is so essential to the due discharge of his duties.
I mention these matters to Deputies in order that, in fulfilling the duty that they have to fulfil under the Constitution, they may discharge that duty with the fullest knowledge that they ought to have. The first issue that has to be decided is whether or not the person who is to be appointed to this position should be one who has been, or is, in the public service of this State, or whether some person unconnected with, and without experience of, the public service or governmental accountancy, should be appointed. There are arguments for the appointment of some person of standing outside the Civil Service, provided he has experience of the workings of the very complicated finance machine and of the control of expenditure that is necessary to safeguard public moneys. There are very few people outside the Civil Service who can have had that experience. However wide the knowledge a chartered accountant or any other qualified accountant may have, it does not fall within the ordinary scope or ambit of his duties to learn anything very much about governmental accountancy or the intricacies of public finance, and, accordingly, the particular type of specialised knowledge which is required for this position can normally only be obtained by a person who has served a long apprenticeship in the public service, and particularly in this particular Office of the Comptroller and Auditor-General.
It may be that Deputies, knowing that the person who is to be appointed is their servant, would prefer someone independent of officialdom or, if you like, bureaucracy. There is something to be said for that. The weight of the argument, however, in the view of the Government who have given this matter very careful consideration in this particular instance, is that, by reason of the intricacies of the duties and the experience that is necessary for the due carrying out of the position, and also by reason of the fact that the holder of the office must command not merely the respect of the accounting officers in the public service but command their fear, so to speak, the post should be filled from within the Civil Service if there is available a sufficiently highly qualified person to fill it. Accounting officers must be in a position, or they must know, that the Comptroller and Auditor-General is a man who thoroughly understands the details and the intricacies of his duties; they must have confidence in him as a person whom they can from day to day consult on the problems that arise in connection with the disbursement of public moneys. Very difficult and intricate problems arise daily in the course of public administration as to whether a particular proposed expenditure comes within the ambit or scope of a vote of money given by this House or whether a Supplementary Estimate would be required. The accounting officers must know that they have in this constitutional officer a man whom they can trust, a man whom they can consult and from whom they will know and will have confidence that they will obtain the most trustworthy information to guide them. They must also know that they have a man—and I use the word without disrespect—that they cannot try any tricks on in connection with the handling of public moneys or the discharge of their duties in connection with the disbursement of voted moneys.
In all these circumstances, and for the reasons that I have barely outlined, the Government came to the conclusion that in their view, which they would submit to the Dáil, the proper person to appoint was the man who has occupied for a considerable number of years now a position similar to that which Mr. Maher occupied before he was appointed Comptroller and Auditor-General. Mr. Wann, who is mentioned in the motion which I am commending to the House, is the present secretary and director of audit in the office of the Comptroller and Auditor-General. That was the office which Mr. Maher occupied from 1923 until he was appointed Comptroller and Auditor-General in 1944. We are assured, and all our inquiries have confirmed, that Mr. Wann has had great experience of the duties of the office. He has professional qualifications in accountancy and he has had every opportunity of attending with Mr. Maher the meetings of the Committee of Public Accounts and of acquiring a knowledge of public accountancy and of the intricacies of the duties of accounting officers in each Department. In accordance with the precedent established by my predecessor, the present Leader of the Opposition, I informed Deputy de Valera yesterday of this proposal and of the reasons for it. The other Parties were informed also by various Ministers and, to the extent that I could reach them, I informed every single Independent member of the proposal that is before the House and the reasons for it.
I want to emphasise that this is not so much a Government proposal as merely a recommendation. It is for the House to decide. We must be jealous in safeguarding the rights and prerogatives of Deputies of this House in connection with this constitutional position. We do not wish to create a precedent or merely to give the impression that, because we have substantially followed the procedure which was followed before when the occasion arose of appointing Mr. Maher, that must necessarily bind a future Dáil or hamper the choice of members of the Dáil in connection with future appointments. On the occasion of the appointment of the late Mr. McGrath as Comptroller and Auditor-General, the procedure adopted was for, I think, seven Deputies of the House to select a particular person. It was emphasised at that time by the Leader of the Labour Party that that procedure was adopted —he suggested it should be continued —in order to emphasise the fact that the Comptroller and Auditor-General was the servant of this House. The procedure adopted in 1944 was different from that. I am adopting the procedure that was adopted by my predecessor, Deputy de Valera, when he was Taoiseach, on the occasion of Mr. Maher's appointment.
We have given this matter very careful consideration. We feel that the type of experience that is necessary requires that the appointment should go to somebody in the public service, if such a person is available in it. If there is a person available in the Civil Service, then his claims — not so much his claims, because really he has no claims, but his qualifications — should be considered. We agree that no person in the Civil Service of this State, whether he be, in fact, in the office of the Comptroller and Auditor-General or in any other post in the public service, has any claims to this post merely because he happens to have qualifications, or merely because he happens to be a high civil servant of long standing, high integrity and great knowledge and experience, or merely because he holds a particular post in the office of the Comptroller and Auditor-General. Nothing that we do here to-day in any way binds our successors in the Dáil. It is a matter which must be done by each Dáil, but on this particular occasion, at all events, we feel that the proper course to adopt is to appoint the man who has had experience in working under Mr. Maher, who gave such good service to this State.
Accordingly, we recommend to the Dáil—and it is merely a recommendation on the part of the Government, putting as well as I can all the facts for and against as shortly as possible—this proposal and we commend it to the members of the Dáil for their approval. Finally, I am sure all Deputies will join with me in wishing Mr. Maher many years to enjoy his retirement in health and happiness as a reward for the great public service he rendered this State in the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor-General during the past 26 years.
We on this side of the House desire to associate ourselves with the expression of regret made by the Taoiseach on the resignation of Mr. Maher. During our time in office, as Leader of the House I was satisfied that there was the fullest safeguarding by him of the privileges of this House in regard to the appropriations of moneys for the public service. He discharged his functions most efficiently, and we regret that he is leaving us. We hope that he will have many years of health before him.
As I informed the Taoiseach when he consulted me, we do not propose to object to the nomination of Mr. Wann, nor do we propose any other candidate. The Taoiseach has put the considerations which must be borne in mind by the House very clearly. We understand that Mr. Wann is the most efficient person we could get for the post. He has the necessary experience and, so far as we have been able to gather, he has proved most satisfactory in the discharge of the duties that he has been performing up to the present time.
We would like also to be associated with the statement of the Taoiseach that this officer being an officer of the House, ceases henceforth to be a civil servant and will have responsibilities to this House alone. We are anxious that it should be made quite clear that the appointment of a civil servant to that post is not made because he is a civil servant but because he is the most suitable person that the House could choose at the present moment. We are very anxious that it should not be regarded as a precedent—the fact that on these occasions when an appointment has been made it has been given to a civil servant.
I feel that the position for this House has been safeguarded by the statements made by the Taoiseach and the Leader of the Opposition. I understand that some similar safeguards were expressed in the statement that was made by the then Taoiseach on the occasion of the appointment of the outgoing Comptroller and Auditor-General.
I will make this suggestion for the future, that when the Ceann Comhairle is notified of the resignation, or the ceasing to hold office, of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, the matter should be referred to the Committee on Procedure and Privileges. I suggest that for this reason; naturally that committee will consult with the Taoiseach and the recommendation coming before the House will come from a committee of the House. I say that so that the position will be on record for future consideration of this important matter.
It was mentioned to me yesterday by the Taoiseach, and it is laid down in the Constitution, that in regard to this position of Comptroller and Auditor-General, the salary paid to him is a salary fixed by statute. it seems to me, and I think it will so appear to every Deputy, that for a position of such grave constitutional responsibility the salary that is being paid at the moment is not adequate. Perhaps the Taoiseach might suggest that that matter should be considered by a committee of the House so that the legislation that will be necessary to deal with it will be introduced as soon as possible after this appointment has been made.
I take it the House agrees to the proposal?
Agreed.
